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Iraq: What a paradox!

Just the other day the world remembered the 10th anniversary of the attack on Iraq. Leaving aside the lie of having to attack Iraq because Saddam was developing WMD's, another reason advanced was that Saddam was a tyrant, barbaric and who attacked his own people.

Well, the war is over - and what do we have now? Barbarism! No rule of law, etc. The New York Times reports:

"With increasing regularity, Iraq’s condemned prisoners are rounded from their cells in groups. One by one, they are led down a hallway to an execution chamber where they are hanged, the sound of the trapdoor reverberating through the cells. There is no advance notice, no last meal, no goodbyes.

There were 21 people hanged on Wednesday, 8 earlier this month and 12 more in mid-March. Iraq’s justice minister said that at least 9 more had been executed this year.

There are reports that the Justice Ministry plans to execute about 150 in coming days — eclipsing the 129 prisoners executed last year, which was nearly double the 68 people hanged in 2011.

“Executing prisoners in batches like this is obscene,” Navi Pillay, the United Nations human rights chief, said in a statement released in Geneva on Friday that was the harshest yet toward an Iraqi government that has drastically increased the number of executions since the withdrawal of American forces at the end of 2011.

“It is like processing animals in a slaughterhouse,” added Ms. Pillay, who said she was “appalled” by recent reports that the Justice Ministry planned to execute a large group in the coming days.

Iraq’s application of the death penalty is particularly egregious, human rights advocates say, because convictions are often based on confessions induced by torture or the testimony of confidential informants. Ms. Pillay said Iraq’s judicial system was “too seriously flawed to warrant even a limited application of the death penalty, let alone dozens of executions at a time.”

She continued, “The application of the death penalty in these circumstances is unconscionable, as any miscarriage of justice as a result of capital punishment cannot be undone.”

"Palestinian municipal elections were supposed to be held last week. Instead, they were canceled. A statement released by the Palestinian Authority claimed the cancellation was "in order to pave the way for a successful end to the siege on Gaza and for continued efforts at unity" between Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and the government in the West Bank.

The cancellation of this election was an unjustified, unlawful, and unacceptable act. It damages democratic rights and makes a mockery of the interests of the Palestinian people.

But this is far more than an internal Palestinian issue. The only lasting peace between Isr…